My last post, “Land Grants or Land Grabs,” revealed that most federal land that started land-grant universities had been taken from Indians. I received some constructive pushback. (See the comments.) But that feedback reminded me of a question, Why did the Europeans invade the New World in the first place and conquer Native Americans, rather than Native Americans invading Europe and conquering Europeans?
The phrasing of this question will alert some readers to the subject of this post, the powerful 1997 book by Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel.[1]
Diamond’s book travels through time (back to the origins of humans) and space (all continents except Antarctica) to answer that question—to determine why some societies became so powerful, with such technology, that they could cross an ocean and conquer millions of people. The European/Native American conflict is the most obvious example, but history has many examples of more powerful groups overcoming less powerful groups.
This nation, like much of the world, owes an enormous debt to ancient Greece and Rome. Our political framework, our political philosophies, even our government buildings reflect theirs. Many of our noblest ideas descend from the thinking of Greek philosophers, and Latin words and concepts pervade our language. The epic and lyric poetry of the ancients, their public rhetoric, their art, their musings, their values, and their histories have shaped the way we think and write and govern.
That said, we tend to ignore an unpleasant fact: The ancients were almost constantly at war. To a large extent these societies were designed for war. (They also relied heavily on slavery, but that is a topic for another day.).
OK, I’m not Jane, but she kindly offered her platform for a brief word on some historical research findings that otherwise would never see the light of day.
We live by proverbs (just ask your grandmother). These are more or less the rules of everyday life. What fascinates me is that some elements of everyday life have not changed over the past 4,600 years. My favorite ancient proverb (forgive me, wives) is the Sumerian “For his pleasure, he got married. On thinking it over, he got divorced.” Today we’ve shortened it to “Marry in haste, repent at leisure.”
Another we use today: “As I escaped from the wild-ox, the wild-cow confronted me,” which in the Bible is “It will be like a man who runs from a lion and meets a bear!” ( Amos 5, 19); or, as I heard so many times as a somewhat less-than-perfect child, “Out of the frying pan, into the fire/,” (More examples in the table below.)Continue reading “4600 Years of Proverbs”
Recently, I have been unable to do the kind of research I need in order to prepare features for this blog. But I do have the time and inclination to share with you some of the interesting stories about history that I see around me. Here are two, one a biblical controversy and one about a smallpox discovery.
A Precursor to the Book of Deuteronomy?
The New York Times has written a fascinating story about a discovery even more exciting than the Dead Sea scrolls found in 1947—unless this discovery is a fake! The story goes back to 1883, when a dealer in antiquities claimed to have found fragments of the original book of Deuteronomy—far older than the Dead Sea scrolls, which go back to the third century BC. Continue reading “A Biblical Mystery . . . A Slave’s Early Prevention of Smallpox . . .”
I was a child when I learned about an unusual Egyptian pharaoh, Akhenaten. He worshipped a single god, Aten, the sun god. And unlike previous pharaohs, he brought to Egypt a more natural style of carving and sculpture, so different from the rigid, flat poses typical of Egypt’s past. (The carving above is of his wife, Nefertiti.) To many Americans in the 1950s, Akhenaten represented a foreshadowing of the monotheism to come, with perhaps a forewarning of Martin Luther as well, as Akhenaten was a rebel against the priestly establishment of 1350 B.C.
I have become reacquainted with Akhenaten while auditing a course in ancient Mediterranean civilizations at North Carolina State. It turns out that while Akhenaten’s impact on Egypt was fleeting, he has fascinated people, especially Europeans, for the past two hundred years. “The Akhenaten myth . . . is a unique barometer exploring the fascination of the West with ancient Egypt,” writes a historian Dominic Montserrat. [1] Even Sigmund Freud was fascinated by Akhenaten. Continue reading “Rebel with a Cause”
